Alexithymia
by DreadNot
Summary: Planning to take Fenris from Kirkwall, Danarius finds another prize that is easier to pluck. Fenris comes forward as an unexpected leader to retrieve Anders before Danarius can find the best way to use an abomination. Volutions 5
1. Prologue

**_AN: _**_This is part of the Volutions series (_Nautilus, Grotesquerie, Haspenald, Anaxiphilia)_. The prologue takes place concurrently with _Anaxiphilia_ which you can find here on ff net by clicking my profile. As with _Grotesquerie_, the POV alternates between chapters. Warnings are necessary for Anders' chapters that there will be psychological torture. Fenris' chapters only require warnings for the standard DA-levels of violence._

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><p>He had returned to Kirkwall at last, his little wolf.<p>

Danarius watched him with proprietary pleasure as he disembarked from the ship that had brought him and his companion from Amaranthine. Oh, but his wolf was tense, Danarius could read it even from his rooftop, seeing the set of Fenris' shoulders, the way he would unconsciously reach back to touch his sword, the subtle bend of his knees as though to spring to respond to any provocation at any moment.

And with every movement, the faint gleam of lyrium. A fortune's worth of lyrium. Danarius' fingers clenched and unclenched with the force of his need to have his property back. He would bring his wolf to heel as he had before, and they would return to the Imperium where Danarius would make him earn the right to continue wearing his marks.

His eyes narrowed as he watched Fenris exchange words with his companion.

"That is the apostate," Hadriana said. She was always so good at reading where his attentions were. Too good, Danarius thought. Her ambitions would be the death of one of them some day - he did not expect it would be his death.

This then was Anders, the rumored Grey Warden and slum healer. He watched a ginger tabby scale the apostate's robes - Tevinter-style, how ironic -and settle on his pack.

Pathetic. His wolf needed a better master than some half-wit mage who wasted himself on the filth of the world.

He raised a hand to order his guards to the attack when the building under him shook with the force of some nearby explosion. More explosions broke the city's relative peace along with screams and the sounds of sudden panic.

Perfect. "Hold." He closed his hand into a fist and followed Fenris and Anders with his eyes. He noted a glint of metal on the apostate's wrist as he brought his staff to bear, but jewelry choices were incidental details when he had an opportunity to observe a potential enemy and learn his strengths and weaknesses.

He already knew Fenris inside and out. His eyes narrowed at the hungry expression that crossed Anders' face when he looked at Fenris. How well did the apostate know his slave's skills? Fenris was, after all, so _very_ skilled.

The cries of warning reached him as citizens fled to the dubious safety of moored ships. The Qunari were attacking? His Fenris did have a nose for trouble, didn't he?

He strode along his rooftop, following Fenris and Anders without letting them out of his sight. They fought well together, cutting down Qunari often without even breaking stride to do so.

Danarius revised his opinion of the apostate up a few notches, but he noted that the man did not summon any minions to fight for him. He used only his own energy, and profligately at that. He might be a challenge for Hadriana, but Danarius was confident that if they dueled, Anders would die.

From his place safe on the rooftops, Danarius enjoyed the spectacle as he might a series of gladiatorial matches in Minrathous. He would put his money on this team and feel confident that he would not lose.

The thought soured when Fenris and Anders encountered a larger party of Qunari and a Saarebas. Fenris was disabled almost immediately, thrown into a wall by a blast of lightning from a Saarebas, leaving Anders to fight on by himself.

Danarius could see that Anders was flagging. He laughed softly, and answered Hadriana's unspoken question. "The Qunari will do most of our work for us. When the mage falls, we will kill them and take my property." Fenris wouldn't even put up a fight, which was almost disappointing, but would save him money for dead mercenaries in the long term.

He could see when Anders reached the end of his reserves. He knew that look well; he had seen it on the faces of mages he had dueled moments before he delivered the coup de grace. He thought less of the apostate for wasting his last magic on Fenris, but he would soon suffer the fate that all fools merited.

He raised his hand again, ready to give the order to attack the moment Anders fell.

And stopped, feeling a rare sense of utter surprise fill him as he watched smoldering cracks open in Anders' skin.

His voice made Hadriana shiver beside Danarius when it reached them, "He is mine to kill!" Not the words - Danarius understood ownership, but the duality of them, one voice human, the other the distorted voice of something that had never been human.

"Abomination," Danarius murmured, wonderment warring with avarice in his heart. "My wolf has an abomination for a master."

He closed his fist and called, "Hold," again while he considered his next steps.

He watched in silence while Anders fought off the Qunari and roused Fenris, following them from a distance until they disappeared into Viscount's Keep, then he turned to Hadriana. "Come. Today is not the day and Fenris is not the only prize for us to take in this city. I have preparations to make."

An abomination. The things he could learn from an abomination... And when the time came, what Danarius would do with his blood would make Fenris' creation seem like a mage child's first attempt at calling light.


	2. Chapter 1   Anders

**_AN:_**_ This chapter takes place immediately after the events in _Basorexia._ You can find _Basorexia_ in my profile._

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><p>Nearly a fortnight after returning to Kirkwall with what might be called a bang, Anders trudged down into Darktown, tired, bloody, and strangely distracted. That he was tired and bloody was easily explained by the fact that he had spent the past four days on the Wounded Coast killing Tal-Vashoth with Hawke. In fact he had taken a leg wound so severe that his trousers were one blood-caked ruin and even with magic, he would have a lasting scar on his right thigh. He shrugged that off without a second thought, his body was a roadmap of scars and he had earned most of them. As long as they weren't on his face, what little vanity he had left could accept the cost.<p>

The distraction was another matter, having largely to do with one white-haired, lyrium-tattooed elf.

Fenris had kissed him.

Anders had difficulty wrapping his mind around that fact. It hardly helped that no sooner had it happened, Fenris denied it. _You are mistaken._

No, he bloody well was not mistaken, and for the past two days since it had happened, it had bothered him, perplexed him, and haunted him. He had even dreamed about it, although in his dream they were back in Vigil's Keep, and it was he who kissed Fenris first. There were other details that followed that – Fenris' voice – but if he dwelled on those, he would be distinctly uncomfortable trying to walk.

He felt obsessed in a way he hadn't experienced since he was a teenager and had pursued an older man named Karl Thekla. For days, weeks, months, his thoughts had been focused on Karl to the exclusion of most things around him. He couldn't afford to act like a lust-struck adolescent around Fenris.

Justice disapproved.

He snorted to himself as he felt that from Justice yet again. What else is new? Justice needed to learn the art of compromise – Justice couldn't be human, but Anders could not be an ideal made flesh. Together they might not be only a man, but there was still a man in there somewhere, and that man had wants and needs unrelated to the eternal pursuit of justice.

He descended the last set of stairs before the flight up to his clinic and considered that Justice was as much part of the problem as anything else. Fenris thought poorly of Merrill because she was a blood mage – rightly in Anders' opinion – but he thought highly of Bethany Hawke. If Anders didn't have Justice….

He left that thought to hang because someone waited outside his clinic door. He took her measure at a glance – human, perhaps in her early to mid-twenties, with dark hair pulled back in a severe bun, her eyes were brown or perhaps dark blue in Darktown's uncertain light. She had lightly-tanned, or perhaps just naturally dark skin, wore a dress that looked formal enough to be some kind of servant's uniform, and she was holding a covered tray in one hand and a wine bottle in the other. She was utterly incongruous in Darktown, both because of the quality and cleanliness of her clothes, and because she looked to be healthy and well-fed.

Anders slowed his steps up the stairs until he reached the landing and she bobbed a nervous curtsey his way.

"You're Messere Anders, aren't you?"

Her accent was light and hard to place, perhaps Antivan, he thought. "Just Anders will do," he said. "Messere never much suited me."

"Oh." She dropped her eyes and bit her lip before seeming to remember what she held. She raised the tray and bottle for him to see. "You took care of my sister last week. Mimi? She came to you—"

"For a personal matter," Anders said before she could finish. Mimi had come to him for a distinctly private matter resulting from a disagreement with her boyfriend. Anders had healed her bruises and broken arm before he, with Justice riding just behind his eyes, had gone to have words with the boyfriend. The man had chosen to leave Kirkwall that same night. Anders had not healed his bruises.

"Just so," the woman said. "I… don't have any more money than my sister does, but I work for a rich family and, well," she held out the tray just a little more, "they won't miss just one dish from their table, or just one bottle from the cellar. Will you let me thank you, Mes—Anders?"

A lifetime ago, Anders would have suggested other ways she could thank him if she were so inclined, but Justice did provide a modicum of common sense where Anders had once lacked it. He didn't proposition her, but if anything was welcome after days on the Wounded Coast with Fenris, Aveline, and Hawke, none of whom were particularly accomplished cooks, it was the prospect of a real meal.

"Let me just open up here and I'd be happy to take your thanks, but you'll have to join me and tell me your name. Mimi didn't mention she had a sister." He pulled the heavy ring of keys from his pack and smiled when she moved aside to let him unlock the door. "And if you don't mind that I'm too filthy for decent company."

"My name is Nives, and I don't mind."

Considering that he stank of smoke, sweat, and blood, her tolerance raised her mightily in Anders' esteem. He got the door unlocked and stood aside with a flourish of his arm to allow her in. "Welcome to my humble rat hole. You can set those things down on the table."

While Nives set the bottle and tray down, Anders closed and barred the door before he scrounged together a mismatched mug and tumbler, a plate, and his only cutlery – a knife, fork, and spoon. "If you don't mind, I'll go change into something less disgusting."

"Of course, Mes—" She caught herself again. "Anders. I'll open the bottle."

Anders left her to retreat to his tiny closet of a bedroom, stripping off his road-worn clothes. Maker, those trousers were so caked with his blood they could practically stand on their own. He dumped everything on his bed before he pulled on a soft, and only slightly tattered pair of trousers and a loose tunic that had more than a few unsavory stains but was at least clean. After a moment's consideration, he pulled his coat back on. Winter in Kirkwall merited respect and warm clothing.

A moment's magic warmed the near-frozen water in the basin in the corner, and he took a few minutes to scrub the worst of the blood and dirt off his face and hands. He left his staff in the corner and went to see this wonderful woman who had brought him a real meal.

Nives had used the time while he was gone to open the wine bottle, but the tray remained covered, presumably to retain whatever heat might be left from its transport. He saw her look him over and shrugged ruefully. The days when he might have lured a woman in with his fashion sense were long gone.

"So," he said, dragging two stools over to the table where Nives had set the food and drink, "what have you brought me? Not that I'd turn up a bowl of nug dumplings at this point, but I do like to know what I'm eating."

"Will you pour?" She asked, pushing the wine bottle toward him. "My employers are Antivan. I hope you don't mind Antivan cooking?"

Anders shook his head and sniffed the wine before pouring a small measure for himself and a fraction more for Nives. He couldn't drink as much as he would like, and she should not if she was to leave Darktown safely. "Beggars can't be choosers. I'll eat what you bring me and I'll say 'thank you, Messere, may I have some more?'"

She laughed softly and lifted the lid off the tray, letting Anders see a plate heaped with flat noodles, and some unidentifiable chunks under a heavy red sauce. The scent that hit him almost immediately was thick and redolent of tomatoes, onions, spices, and some kind of seafood.

"It's an Antivan specialty. Translated it just means 'fish stew with noodles.' There was so much that I knew that no one would miss it if I took some to bring to you." She tipped the dish to push the lion's share onto Anders' plate. "Tell me if you like it."

Anders' stomach growled and he half-expected there to be echoes from its hollow interior. "I'll like it. Thank you, Nives. You didn't have to do this, but I surely thank you for it." He raised his rough ceramic tumbler and tapped it against her mug before taking a sip of the wine. After that, he said nothing as he wolfed down every bite of the food on his plate and most of what was on Nives'.

While he ate, Nives watched him, stared at the ramshackle clinic, and picked at the food on her own plate. Finally, Anders pushed his empty plate away, covered his mouth to muffle his belch, and then muffled a jaw-cracking yawn.

"Sorry." He yawned again and blinked heavily. "It's been a long few days. I don't think I'll be very good company."

His stomach was wonderfully full and the wine had gone perfectly with the Antivan spices. All he wanted was to drag himself off to bed to sleep for a day before he got up to start all over again.

Nives watched him so expectantly that he wondered if he had said something wrong. "Was it something I said?"

She shook her head and said, "Are you feeling alright? You look a little…."

A little what? Anders yawned again, but his eyelids were slowly adding tiny little eyelid weights to them. He felt them droop more and more with every tiny weight. "Mm… Nives, I need to go to bed."

He waited for her to take the hint, but she only took a sip of her wine.

Maker, now it wasn't just his eyelids but his head. It was growing heavier and heavier and…

Nives moved his plate and caught his head before it hit the table.

"I _am _sorry about this," she whispered, lowering his head to rest on the table's rough wood surface. "You seem like a good man, but I'm not paid to care about that. If you live through this, don't blame Mimi. She doesn't have a sister."

He knew he should feel something about what she said, but he was just… so… tired. He fought to keep his eyes open, seeing Nives pass through his field of vision, walking to the clinic door and opening it to admit a handful of men in armor and a grey-haired, bearded man in robes.

He could still hear them when he finally lost the fight with his eyelids.

He recognized Nives' voice. "One apostate, docile but unharmed, as you requested."

He did not recognize the man's voice. "How long will he be like this?"

"If what you say about his being a Grey Warden is true, I cannot say." Some corner of his mind – Justice – recognized that her accent was thicker now, distinctly Antivan. "There are rumors that Grey Wardens are not like ordinary men in many ways, but that is not my problem, he is yours."

The man spoke dismissively. "Payment has already been made to your guild. Get out."

Nives said nothing more. The man spoke again, so close that even in his near-sleep Anders' body jerked in response. "The bindings. Get them on him now."

He felt someone take his hands. Maker, he wanted to open his eyes and see these people. Justice clamored at him that he had to respond, but his body… he was so tired.

_Just a little sleep._

_No!_Justice was adamant that they could not be complacent, but Anders could not rouse himself above the thick layer of sleep that stood between him and action.

He felt his left hand pressed down on some cold, flat surface before it was encased in more cold that held his fingers splayed apart. His other hand was pressed to a similar surface, but he heard someone say, "Wait."

The words grew more distant, losing most of their meaning. _"…coat…" "…deliver…" "…wolf…"_

He felt his coat roughly removed. Justice clamored still more, but the Fade beckoned. Dreams would be better than this, wouldn't they?

The last thing he remembered before the Fade welcomed him into its embrace was the feel of someone lifting his right arm and roughly twisting the cuff he wore there.


	3. Chapter 2 Fenris

Fenris stripped off his armor one piece at a time as he stalked through his stolen mansion, starting with his gauntlets just inside the front door, ending with his leather jerkin when he reached the room he had claimed as his bedroom. He stopped long enough to pull on the cloak Herren had given him at Vigil's Keep before he crouched at the fireplace to coax kindling to flames.

He glanced ruefully up at the ceiling with its open holes. Perhaps another room would be more comfortable during the winter. Even Anders in his Darktown hole would have more comfortable quarters during the coldest months than Fenris would.

His face screwed up with distaste. He could not get that man off his mind, and it was no better since they had returned to Kirkwall than it had been when they were in Amaranthine.

The kindling took fire only reluctantly, which Fenris used to his advantage. He used his belt knife to scrape off thin wood shavings, setting those under the finer cuts of wood and twigs stacked carefully to get enough air to light but not so much that it was blown out.

He tried to let the details hold his attention to keep it from wandering to what he had so impulsively, so _foolishly _done two days before on the Wounded Coast. He cursed the moment of weakness that had led him to pull Anders to him for a kiss. If he had wanted to satisfy his curiosity as to whether Anders would still taste the same as he had at Vigil's Keep, waiting until he was flat on his back in the middle of a pitched fight was the worst possible time.

Despite himself, he smiled at the first flickering flames as they spread into the kindling. At least he had managed to surprise Anders just as thoroughly as Anders had surprised him with a first kiss that only Fenris remembered.

He pursed his lips and blew gently at the base of the kindling and watched the fire grow. Satisfied that it would burn without his constant attention, he stood up and examined the thin line of scar tissue that ran across his midsection. The lyrium marks were unbroken by his new scar. As always, the lyrium had knit together without even the first touch of healing magic, even while flesh and muscle were torn and bleeding on either side of the brand. It was that way everywhere on his body except his left hip, where Anders had gouged out a piece of lyrium so large that the brands to either side of the wound could not bridge the gap.

The scar there was an angry red, puckered and uneven. He could feel the gap in the matrix of his brands, a discordant note in the harmony of the markings.

He spat into the fire in disgust and turned away. "Hn. _Harmony."_

He left the room with the foul taste of false harmony on his tongue. He would wash it away with more of Danarius' wine.

As he descended the stairs, someone pounded on the mansion's front door. Hawke never knocked, was this Aveline's guardsmen come to finally address some of the Hightown residents' complaints about the squatter elf? Or something else?

He turned and ran on light feet back up to his room, snatching his sword from his scabbard before he warily descended the stairs. The pounding came again, sounding more frantic than authoritarian, if that could be read from the tempo of a fist on wood.

He descended the stairs at a run, sword at the ready, and snatched the door open to the sight of an elderly elf. Suddenly all was silent, even the city outside seemed to pause in Fenris' perception as he recognized the man – one of Danarius' personal attendants, one the magister had favored for his light hands in dressing him, and his skill with needle and thread.

He clutched an oilcloth-wrapped bundle to his chest and panted with fear and surprise at the sight of Fenris and his sword. What was the man's name? Kanut.

He looked past Kanut and saw no one beyond a passing guardsman he recognized as a regular on the Hightown patrol, but Kanut went only where Danarius went.

Fenris' brands flared with light before he reached out and jerked Kanut through the door, slamming it closed before he braced his hip against it.

"What are you doing here?"

Kanut held out the bundle with in both hands and lowered his head. His voice quavered with such fear that Fenris would never have recognized its reedy timbre for Kanut's usual light tenor. "Master Danarius sends his regards."

Still he did not take the bundle. "Where is he?" His own voice was harsh to cover the fear that had bloomed inside him from the moment he recognized Kanut. He had said "let him come" but now the challenge rang hollow in the chasm fear had opened in his chest.

Kanut shook his head and Fenris saw a droplet of blood fall to the floor from his downcast face. "I do not know. Please, just take this."

Fenris knocked the bundle aside, hearing it hit the floor with a soft thump, and caught the front of Kanut's rough jerkin. He enunciated each word slowly. "Where. Is. He?"

Now he could feel the heat coming off Kanut's skin, like a fever run rampant. It was a wonder he could walk at all. His nose was bleeding freely, the sclera of his eyes fully blood-red, and Fenris saw at last that he had misjudged Danarius' message.

He shoved Kanut away as the walking bomb spell reached its peak and the elf erupted from the inside, turning the mansion's entry into an abattoir. Fenris twisted away and hunched, feeling the wet thud of meat and the soaking wash of blood against the back of his cloak as he was struck by the flying gore that had been a man moments before.

When he straightened and turned back, the air was miasmic with a particulate haze of blood. Bits of matter that had hit the wall and not fallen free occasionally came loose with a meaty thud.

Even as inured to violence as Fenris considered himself to be, this shook him, as Danarius had obviously intended.

And this was only part of Danarius' message?

He hooked the tip of his sword under the twine that held the other part of Danarius' message together, lifting the bundle without touching it. The rain of blood explained why it was wrapped in oilcloth.

Fenris left the entry with the bundle dangling from his sword, not bothering to lock the door. Danarius' message had successfully reawakened the fatalism that Fenris had lived with every day as a slave – if Danarius was going to come, he would come whether Fenris locked and barred the door or not. He paid no mind to the bloody footprints he trailed more than halfway up the stairs.

Back in his bedroom, the fire was still feeding on the kindling, but it had spread to the driest of the logs on the pile. He dropped the bundle on the floor and contemplated throwing the sodden mess of his cloak into the fire, but decided against for practical reasons. Instead he threw open his window and tossed it out into the inner courtyard, wincing at the wet slap it made when it hit paving stones.

Closing the window he turned back to eye the oilcloth bundle like a venomous snake that was coiled to strike. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that whatever was inside that bundle would not be something he wanted to see.

Stalking closer he actually circled the package, prodding it with his foot. It had been heavy but soft. Had Danarius sent him some other slave's skin in some misguided attempt to terrorize him?

He ruthlessly quashed the fleeting thought that Danarius had already terrorized him. He was a free man, and he would fight to the end before he would give in again as he had in Seheron. At least here in Kirkwall, he had kept his distance from anyone Danarius might want to take from him to punish him.

This would not be a repeat of Seheron. He would die first, or better still, Danarius would die first.

With that thought he steeled himself and braced the bundle with his foot while he cut the ties with the tip of his sword. He still stepped back as though expecting an attack as he used his sword tip to push the edges of the oilcloth aside to reveal the bundle's contents.

At first he could not countenance what he was seeing. He took it in piecemeal – here a flash of feathers, there a glimpse of green leather, another glimpse of brass chain.

He could not put it into any kind of rational context, but his bare chest broke with goose flesh long before his mind accepted the reality of Danarius' message.

_I have Anders._

Something in him flinched as the message was fully received. Anders in Danarius' hands? There were still many things he did not understand about the mage, but one thing he was certain of – he would not cooperate with Danarius and Danarius would see him suffer for it.

No. This was not his problem. Danarius had misjudged. He could not use an abomination as a lure to Fenris, nor as a dagger in his heart.

Anders was not his problem.

While he struggled with himself, heart near-breaking in the tug of war between terror of his former master and rage at the blow Danarius had aimed at everything he had built for himself, he leaned down and finally picked up Danarius' message, shaking it out of its neat folds.

Patchwork leather and feathers.

Fenris held Anders' coat and mused that it was heavier than it looked. There were armor struts under the pauldrons that added a surprising amount of weight. It was small wonder than when Anders wore the chest and arm-baring Tevinter style, that he showed more muscle than one might expect of a mage. Certainly more than Fenris was accustomed to seeing on true Tevinter magisters.

He picked at the coat's collar and pushed back thoughts of where Anders might be right that moment, but no matter how many times Fenris had told himself that the mage was not his problem, he could not help but see him in his mind's eye.

Anders would be chained, of course. Fenris wondered how Danarius handled the matter of the cuff on Anders' right wrist – it would interfere with the usual slave manacles, but he had no doubt that his former master would find a way around the problem.

Danarius would take other precautions with a captive mage, a captive abomination. The magister was no fool – a hood and gag would be only the simplest of the precautions he would take.

Anders hated the Deep Roads, would he hate those restraints as much?

Fenris brushed his fingers over one green-black feather and closed his eyes.

The mage drove him mad, touched the core of fury he wanted to drown rather than acknowledge. He spoke of mage freedom without ever once knowing what the true consequences of free mages would be.

He was foolish, stupidly idealistic, closed-minded, and he stole the blankets.

All that without once touching on the fact that he was also an abomination.

Fenris did not open his eyes when he raised the coat to his face and drew in a deep breath, remembering Anders' bravery under Darktown, his vulnerability in the Deep Roads when they went to the Architect, his friends, his contained power, and even his strange sense of honor.

He dropped the coat and turned to jerk his armor on as quickly as possible.

They might never be friends, but no matter how there were some parts of Anders that he wanted to excise from the man as a whole, he could not leave Anders in Danarius' hands to allow the magister to do the excision.

He would need Hawke for this.


	4. Chapter 3 Anders

Anders woke up, which was the first of many surprises consciousness held for him. He was relatively confident that he was awake because he knew the feel of the Fade as only a mage could, but in all other respects he might as well be caught in a nightmare.

He tried to take stock before panic had a chance to creep in on him. He was sitting up in a chair, his arms supported on wide armrests. A first exploratory attempt to move told him that his elbows were held by some kind of strap and his hands were restrained, somehow held splayed open. He remembered the feel of something cold being closed around his hand and the only image that came to mind was having his hand trapped inside an iron gauntlet that had rusted into immobility. Wriggling his fingers gave him the same impression. There was virtually no room to move inside whatever held them, and something was strapped so firmly around his wrist that he could not even try to withdraw his hands from the restraints.

He tried to open his eyes, but a gentle, firm pressure did not allow it. In fact, gentle, firm pressure seemed to be the order for the day across much of his body. When he swallowed, he felt straps under his chin, across his cheeks, and a wide band of something that, when he tried to open his mouth or move his face, drew tight across his mouth, dug into his nostrils, and covered most of his cheeks. He had enough room to breathe through his nose, but a head cold would be fatal.

He was blind and muzzled, hands immobilized, arms restrained. When he tried to move his legs, they were equally bound, and the movement made him aware of more straps at his waist and across his chest. In fact, the only place anywhere on his body that he had any freedom of movement was his neck – he could turn his head freely, which told him only that he was in a completely silent room.

He could see nothing, touch nothing, direct his magic at nothing. He was alone and he was helpless.

That is when the terror finally won past his careful walls and took a shrieking run through the rooms of his mind.

_Alone in the silence!_

When he had spent a year in solitary confinement, he had talked to himself, told himself stories, sung songs, even screamed at the top of his lungs just to fill the silence. Now he could not even do that. He was alone and he would go mad of it!

_**Not alone.**_

Justice took the terror and thrust it back outside the walls of their joint resolve, building the walls up to protect Anders from himself. Justice the individual was weakening again in Kirkwall's malevolent influence, but he still carried enough of the reminder of who he had been from their time back among the Grey Wardens to be the companion Anders needed in that moment.

Anders' gratitude could not be expressed in words, but words were usually extraneous between them.

Bolstered by Justice's support, he tried to put together what he remembered. He remembered Nives and the delicious treachery stew. She had been Antivan? Anders remembered Zevran joking that Crows were trained to tolerate poisons that would incapacitate or kill most people. His stories had included excessive amounts of vomiting and the elder Crows' amusement at the apprentices' expense, but the meat of the story remained. She had eaten some of the stew with him without effect – had Nives been a Crow?

Templars would not hire the Crows. He considered that perhaps he was just a side target in some strike against Zevran and Widald Amell, but that did not feel right either. Why wait until he was back in Kirkwall if it was meant to target people back in Amaranthine? Justice presented him with the memory of the man in robes who had come just before Anders had lost the fight to keep his eyes open. Not a templar, but someone who could afford the expense of hiring an Antivan Crow just to drug one apostate?

Footsteps.

He raised his head, listening to someone approaching with an unhurried tread of hard soles on stone.

"They told me you were awake." It was a man's voice, with a familiar accent that Anders wasted no time trying to identify in favor of a more immediate question.

They? Had there been silent observers for his waking and futile attempts at movement? Ordinarily, this would be where he would mouth off. Perhaps something along the lines of _"Bondage? I usually save that for the second date, but I suppose the voyeurism will do."_He would just have to settle for thinking it, but it lacked the same impact if it did not annoy someone.

"It certainly took you long enough. I am disappointed. I thought the stories of Grey Wardens and their recuperative powers would be more accurate, but you slept for nearly a day." The man came nearer, and despite himself, Anders turned his head toward him like a sunflower following the sun.

Anders felt a moment of panic before he realized that had to be a lie – he was not hungry enough, thirsty enough, or in dire enough need of a piss for that to be true.

The man's voice came from right by his ear intimate in its proximity, yet distantly amused. "I thought an abomination would be more impressive."

He recognized the accent – Fenris' accent.

A Tevinter accent.

The terror tried to climb the barriers Justice had erected, but together they fought it off. He was alive and oh so carefully restrained. If he were slated for death, he would be dead for now. No, this man wanted something else, and when people wanted things, sooner or later, an opportunity arose.

"Your breathing just got harder," the man said. "Is it that I know your secret?"

Anders flinched from an unexpected brush of fingertips in his hair, pulling loose strands back from his face and gently working it free of the straps around his head. "Or have you guessed who I am?"

Anders tried to pull away from the overly-intimate touch, but the man hooked his fingers in something attached to one of the straps at the back of his head and pulled him back into place. "How did you come to possess my runaway wolf, hm? Yours to kill, is he?"

The detached amusement fled the man's voice turning it harsh. "He is mine to kill, and now so are you. Nod if you understand."

Anders held his head still until the man – Danarius, it had to be – used his hold on the strap to nod Anders' head for him.

Maker, Anders wanted to kill him. He wanted to even have his mouth free for long enough to challenge the magister to a duel. He felt certain that if he could just speak, he could piss Danarius off so thoroughly that he would have to do something other than this.

Danarius released his head. "You don't understand yet, but you will. From now on, you may thank your master by bowing your head."

Anders held his head stubbornly upright and heard Danarius laugh before his footsteps receded. Thirty-four steps before he was alone in the silence.

He tested his bonds again, finding them just as unmoving as they had been when he had first tried them. He was not too thirsty yet, nor too hungry yet, and he was not yet at the squirming in his seat stage with his bladder. Most importantly, while he had no idea where he was in Kirkwall, he knew that he was still in Kirkwall. Nowhere else in Thedas, outside of some isolated shrines to demons and old gods, had quite the spiritual pall over it that Kirkwall did.

He tried to occupy his mind with questions – how many men did he remember at the clinic before he lost his fight for consciousness? How much had Danarius' voice echoed on the walls? Could he guess from that how large the room was?

Who had informed him that Anders was awake? And were they in the room now?

That last thought made Anders' skin crawl and despite the futility of it, he turned his head from side to side, holding his breath to try to hear someone else's breathing, or the scuff of a shoe on stone. He heard nothing and eventually subsided.

Time held no meaning locked in the dark, unable to move. He shifted occasionally, but after an hour or two or maybe three, his ass fell asleep, his legs tingled, and his shoulders grew stiff. Who said sitting around on your ass all day was a good thing?

Finally, in self-defense against the boredom and omnipresent fear, he started to doze.

As soon as his head began to loll, something gave his bare forearm a sharp pinch. He jerked awake with a gasp that was painful past the gag and twisted his head ineffectually trying to find the source of the pinch.

Nothing happened.

Lots, and lots of nothing.

_This is how a Tevinter blood mage does torture? _

He started to doze again, and just as soon as his head drooped, another hard pinch.

He grunted against the muzzle and flailed his head uselessly.

Now he was starting to lose track of time. He was getting thirsty, he could feel a raw spot rubbing under one ear where one of the straps shifted with his breathing, and he had to take a piss.

Just how did one signal that to silent watchmen? Was there a series of grunts? _Please Messeres, could you take my cock out for me?_

He feigned falling asleep, letting his head dip, and jerked his head around the instant he felt fingers on his arm.

Nothing.

His imagination insisted that Danarius had chosen shades to guard him. That right that moment, some monster half-floated over him.

Justice reminded him that he would feel the weakening influence of such a creature, and that whoever it was, was just a mortal being. Albeit a patient and stealthy one.

The next time he dozed off, Danarius' voice woke him. "Tired so soon? Mortal bodies are so frail, aren't they?"

Anders' head shot up, turning toward Danarius, who was standing at his right. He felt a hand twist the cuff on his right wrist. "We tried removing this along with the rest of your possessions, but it wouldn't come off. I can sense the magic in it, I wonder, what does it do?"

_On demand orgasms, I know where you can get one of your very own. Go see Xenon, tell him I sent you._ Anders wished Danarius were the kind of evil bastard who liked snappy repartee, but no, his wit was wasted alone in his head. Justice was the worst audience for such things and always had been.

"Little matter for now," Danarius said, releasing his wrist. "I presume you are tired by now. Hungry? Thirsty? Surely your body has needs. All you have to do to see them met is thank me. You know how."

Oh he knew. All he had to do was bow his head and Danarius would ungag him?

Anders was still for a moment while pride warred with guile. Then he bowed his head.

Danarius patted his head before Anders heard thirty-four steps and then silence.

Minutes later, a knife cut into the meat of his thigh.

Anders screamed behind his muzzle, as much in surprise as in pain and fear, but the cut was not repeated, and a moment later he felt fingers rubbing something into the cut. The pain from the knife quickly turned into a burn that spread outward from the point of the cut, leaving behind a numbness that sapped his spirit and muted his connection to the Fade and even to Justice.

Magebane. He knew it when the poison reached his tongue, a flavor that was more a color than a taste, acid green and hateful, cutting him off from his ability to use magic until the poison wore off.

He felt the tear in his trousers pulled open enough for the cut to be bandaged and then two sets of hands unstrapped him enough to slide forward in the chair. One set held him impersonally while another pulled down his trousers and smalls and pushed a cold pan under his thighs until he realized what was expected of him.

The sound of piss hitting the pan was the loudest thing in the room. The entire process of wounding him, unstrapping him, and holding him for the most impersonal cock-grab of his life had taken place in utter silence. He felt like a thing, not a person.

He knew on one level that this had to be the intent, but it still struck him as little else had since he had woken here.

The hands shook him off, whisked away the pan, and pulled up his smalls and trousers before he was pushed back in the chair and strapped in again. Only then was the muzzle across his mouth unstrapped.

"Makers hairy _balls!"_Anders swore immediately before he opened and closed his mouth and worked his jaw back and forth. "You sure do know how to treat a fellow. I used to have to pay extra at the Pearl for this kind of treatment, next time do you think you could—"

A cold spout hit his lips and immediately started to pour a lukewarm broth into his mouth. Anders had to shut up and swallow or wear the broth. He swallowed down the broth as quickly as he could until the spout was taken away, a dry cloth was swiped over mouth and chin, and the muzzle was quickly replaced.

The hands retreated, the room was silent, and though he held his breath and listened for all that was in him, he heard not the faintest movement to indicate that anything was being taken away or cleaned up, or that the owners of the hands had ever existed.

He was once again, utterly alone.


	5. Chapter 4 Fenris

Fenris pounded on the door to Hawke's estate with a fist, pointedly not thinking about the fact that not half an hour ago another elf had been pounding on the door to _his_estate in similar fashion. He pounded until Bodahn opened the door with a smile that dropped off his face the moment he saw Fenris' stern expression.

"Messere Hawke is in the bath," Bodahn said before Fenris shouldered past him and ran up the stairs to Hawke's bathing chamber.

Brutal and Ser Pounce-a-lot raised their heads to follow his progress before Ser Pounce-a-lot turned a circle on Brutal's back and settled in to knead the mabari's back with his claws before going back to sleep.

"Anders? Is that you?" Hawke asked as Fenris pushed open the door. He was neck-deep in his marble tub, steam rising from water that was green-tinted with the herbs Fenris saw floating on its surface. He had a washcloth over his face and did not remove it while he spoke. "Have you come for your cat? I know I said we could keep it here when you go out with me, and Sandal loves it, but it's a bad influence on Brutal. I think if we ever run into some kind of cat demon or something like that, Brutal's just going to turn tail and..." he pulled the washcloth off his eyes and faltered when he caught sight of Fenris, "...run. Who's dead?"

Grimly, Fenris said, "His name was Kanut."

"And why do you have Anders' coat?" Hawke was already sliding out of the bath, unmindful of Fenris' presence or his own nudity while he grabbed a towel and started to dry himself. "Also," he paused in toweling off to gesture vaguely at his own hair before pointing at Fenris' head, "you've got... bits."

Fenris did not doubt for a moment just what kind of bits Hawke meant, but there were other things that had to be addressed without delay.

"Danarius has the mage. He has Anders." Fenris quickly filled Hawke in on Danarius' unique method of delivering his message.

While Fenris spoke, Hawke finished drying off and pulled on a robe, but from there his forward momentum seemed to stall. He led Fenris out of the bath and into his bedroom where he stared at his armor on its stand without making a move to put it on or get dressed.

Fenris was reminded that Hawke had not been himself since the battle with the Arishok. It had been obvious to everyone that what was developing between him and Isabela was not just a passing fling. He had fought for her, and taken grievous wounds for her, but in the end, she had left, saying only of her return with the tome, "I didn't do it for them. I did it for you. It was always about you." Her leaving him twice in one day had wounded him, and Hawke's friends had all agreed that they would not burden him with complicated problems for a while - fighting Tal'Vashoth was one thing, or maybe some therapeutic bandit-killing, but hunting down a magister was something else.

But Fenris needed Hawke - he needed his skills, his confidence, and his contacts.

He took the first piece of underpadding for Hawke's armor and knelt to hold it for Hawke to step into. "Once you are dressed, we will find Aveline and Varric." Between Varric and Aveline, if something happened in Kirkwall, one of them could probably find out. They were the best resources Fenris could ask for, outside of Hawke, who was a one-man engine of destruction.

Hawke let Fenris wrangle him into his armor and fit his daggers into their sheaths before they collected Brutal – to Ser Pounce-a-lot's disapproval – and left to recruit Aveline and Varric.

• • •

"Here, drink this." Varric pushed a glass of wine into Fenris' hand and sat down at the head of his meeting table. "I've got the word out. Any new slavers, any Tevinters, any hint about Blondie and it'll come back to me."

"My guards are on alert too," Aveline said, settling her hip on the table's edge. "They know to come to me and not to engage. I won't lose my people to blood mages if I can help it."

Fenris paused in his pacing to take a sip and wrinkled his nose. "Is there any wine in this water?"

"Some," Varric said. "Enough to keep the water from turning your guts inside out. My contacts work fast and we don't want to leave Blondie with that magister any longer than we have to, so let's keep you on your twinkly little toes."

Hawke gave a halfhearted snort of laughter and sipped his own watered wine.

"Your contacts had best be swift," Fenris said, sparing a glare for Hawke. "Danarius could leave Kirkwall at any time."

"What will he do with Anders?" Aveline asked.

Fenris passed a gauntleted hand over his face before he drained the glass of weak wine and shook his head. "You do not want to know."

• • •

"Fenris..."

Fenris paused in his pacing to glower at Hawke. "What?"

Aveline lifted her head from the table where she'd laid it "just to rest my eyes" and watched the exchange with interest.

"Is it Danarius or Anders that has you acting like this?"

From the corner of his eye, Fenris saw Varric straighten up from his half-asleep slouch.

He knew his voice came out as a dangerous growl, but could not seem to contain himself. "What do you mean, Hawke?"

"You haven't sat down once in five hours," Hawke said. He might not be feeling himself, but he met Fenris' angry gaze without flinching. "You've practically worn a rut in the floor pacing back and forth."

Fenris had no words for the sudden jumble of emotions that struck him with Hawke's words. "And you think it is because of the abomination?" He leaned on the table and brought his face down to Hawke's eye level. "If Danarius had his way, he would have me kill you all. He would have me slaughter you and everyone you hold dear. I have done it before and I will not be his slave again. If you wonder why I cannot sit or rest, it is not because of Anders, it is because I know what you cannot."

There were too many horrors he could summon simply from memory without letting his imagination anywhere near what Danarius would do to an abomination in his power.

A tentative knock interrupted the tense moment. All four heads whipped around, making the dwarf standing in the doorway take a step back under the weight of their attention.

"I can come back later," he said, taking another step away from the door.

Varric was out of his seat and smiling broadly as he hustled over to catch the newcomer before he could get away. "Harrel, right? No need to go. Have you got something for me?"

Harrel said nothing more until Varric pressed a small pouch into his hand. "Carta's been using some caves outside Kirkwall, but someone else just moved in. I overheard Mavvit saying that most of a delivery crew were slaughtered tonight."

Varric made a commiserating sound and put an arm around his shoulders. "That's good information. Where's this cave?"

Harrel took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and gave it to Varric. "I knew you'd ask. That's all I know, and I've gotta go before they notice I'm gone."

Varric passed the page to Aveline, who smoothed it out to show a rough map. Fenris moved to peer at the map and grunted. "I know these caves. Slavers used to use them under the Imperium's rule. There were holding pens there."

Harrel nodded eagerly. "Cages all over the place, but we just use it for storing..." He shot Aveline a look and caught himself. "...things."

"Not anymore," Aveline said, her response a study in casual indifference. "So it's not my problem, is it?"

Fenris considered the history of the caves as he remembered them and nodded to himself. "This is it. He would know these caves as well, and that they can be defended."

Hawke pushed himself out of the dwarf-height chair and stretched. "Then let's go get Anders."

Fenris watched Varric thank Harrel and escort him to the door, murmuring promises and even laughing at something they shared in Dwarvish. The moment Varric turned back to face them, his expression was all business. "Bianca hasn't had a chance to play in days, what with you lot off storming the Wounded Coast without me."

"This will not be play." Fenris felt as though he would drown under the flood of feelings the thought of confronting Danarius roused in him, but he could not turn away, not for Anders' sake, but more importantly, not for his own.

• • •

_Hadriana._ Just hearing her name from the elven girl brought bile to this throat. Everything about the holding caves filled Fenris with rage, bringing back memories he would rather have kept in the darkest reaches of his mind. He had so few memories to begin with that it sometimes seemed that his had greater weight and impact than those of someone like Hawke who had a full lifetime's worth of memories to temper the horrors of what they faced so frequently.

_"Everything was fine until today…."_

The girl's words cut him more deeply than any sword. He had tried to make himself a life as a free man, but just like her, he still did not, could not comprehend the full reality of what freedom might entail.

They both lacked context for a life other than what they had learned in the Imperium.

He was punch drunk and reeling when Hawke offered to help her. Even as he lashed out, accusing his friend of wanting a slave, he knew that it was cruel and unworthy of them both.

Hawke's calm response shamed him. "I was offering her a job, Fenris."

Fenris could feel Aveline and Varric's eyes on him, judging him. He deserved it. Hawke had been a friend to him - sometimes being a friend meant teasing him or putting him off balance, but the man had never denied him help or comfort or just someone to listen.

He deserved better than being accused of being a slaver, but all Fenris could summon up in the middle of the storm of emotions was, "Ah. Then... that's good. My apologies."

Maker, but he had no idea how to be a friend.

• • •

Fenris' body sang with power and rage as he leapt into the air and brought his sword down to cleave through the last of Hadriana's summoned demons. She was like all magisters - eager to barter her soul for power, and see where it had gotten her.

Hadriana cowered in a corner, Aveline's sword tip at her throat until Fenris crouched in front of her. Aveline backed away to let him confront his old tormentor. He could feel his friends at his back, but his attention was all for this woman. How he relished the fear in her eyes.

"Where is he?" He put a lyrium-lit hand on the floor and leaned in, watching her push as far into the corner as she could to get away from him. "Where is Danarius?"

Hadriana shook her head, her once-arrogant features now distorted with terror. "I don't know!"

"Liar!" He reached his free hand out to her. "I will tear your heart out of your chest if you lie to me again."

She tried to flatten herself back further and shook her head. "He didn't tell me, I swear it. He said he would come to me if I succeeded in recapturing you. He didn't even say how he'd know, but you know that he would know. He is Danarius."

"Pah," Fenris spat on the floor by her hand to indicate his disbelief and disgust. "Another lie."

She caught his wrist when the clawed tip of his gauntlet cut through her robe. "It's true! But I have other information you'll want. Swear to me that you will let me go and I'll tell you."

Fenris twisted his wrist out of her grip and closed his hand over hers, squeezing until he felt bone grind. "If you cannot tell me where Danarius is, you are no use to me."

"You have a sister!"

In shock, Fenris loosened his grip enough for her to pull her hand away and cradle it to her chest.

"I know where she is," Hadriana went on, finding some inner reserve of arrogance to straighten her spine. "Swear to me that you will let me go, and I will tell you where she is."

That look on her face... he remembered it from too many nights where she would wake him from his sleep with a kick and a demand that he fetch water from the well to fill her bath one bucket at a time, when she would "spill" salt over his only meal of the day and tell him to eat lest their master have a weak bodyguard. The taunts, the gibes, the endless cruelties because she needed someone lower than her to hurt...

"I swear it," he said, and while the man he wanted to be counseled him to keep his word, the monster he had been created to be heard what she had to say about his sister and then reached into her chest and crushed her heart.

He should have felt something, but when he stood and looked down at her lifeless body, all he felt was empty. He was no closer to finding Danarius and Anders, and he had just crushed some piece of the man he had been trying to become.

He shook off Hawke's attempts at comfort and left the holding caves without the others. If Danarius wanted him, he was all alone. Let the magister come. One of them would die, and in that moment, Fenris did not much care which of them it was


	6. Chapter 5 Anders

How long had it been, Anders wondered, after the fifth or tenth or twentieth time that fingers pinched him awake when his too-heavy head lolled as he dozed. Sometimes the pinch was on his arm, other times his leg, once even his tormentor pinched the side of his neck. He never knew where the next sharp pain would come from, and he jumped in surprise every time.

He was so tired that he felt drunk with it. The kind of tired that hits after not just one missed night of sleep, but two or even three.

With that fatigue wrapped around his sense of time like cotton batting, he had no means of knowing how long he had been captive.

He thought about cotton, thick and white, wrapping his arms and his legs, covering his eyes, stopping his mouth, creeping its way up his nose until he couldn't breathe...

He jerked awake before the pinch came on the tender skin of his forearm, panting harshly through his nose without finding enough air. Panic gripped him until his entire body trembled against the restraints.

_Justice! Maker, Justice help me!_

Justice's mental voice was weak, but it cut through Anders' panic. _**It has not been days.**_

Anders caught his breath and held it, forcing himself to stop his struggles against the bonds before he let his breath out in a shuddering sigh.

_What?_

_**It has not been days. It has not even been hours. The magebane has yet to wear off.**_

Anders struggled against the aftermath of his brief panic that just magnified the all-encompassing weariness. Yes, if he thought about it, there was still the horrible synaesthetic flavor of magebane on his tongue.

He felt as though the answer to what was happening should be obvious. If he weren't so tired, he was sure it would be.

If he could just...

...rest...

...for a little...

The fingers pinched him again, tweaking his ear and jerking him up with an almost inaudible grunt of complaint.

He thought of fire to burn those fingers off the next time they touched him. Ice to turn the flesh as black as a burn, frostbite to take away all further pinches for life. Contagion to turn the body against itself until the fingers rotted away. He would find all fingers that had ever pinched anywhere and he would have his bloody vengeance.

He jerked awake from his dozing fantasy to another vicious pinch to the already-tender skin of his forearm.

He had to stay awake, he had to think. There was something he was missing, _What are we missing?_

He heard footsteps.

They stopped after twenty-eight. Was this someone with a longer stride? Had he missed the first six steps? Was this some new way to play with his mind?

He cocked his head toward the source of the steps and listened. He heard the rustle of cloth before he felt the subtle movement of displaced air across his nose. He jumped despite himself when he felt a hand test the straps that held his muzzle. The spot under his ear that had been chafing uncomfortably had something slick rubbed onto it before a bit of soft padding was put between the raw spot and the strap.

The hands impersonally tested all of his bindings, adjusting most of them up or down by inches, easing sore spots Anders had been unaware of until the pressure was alleviated.

It took time to test all the straps. Anders dozed under the attentions, startling just a little when his chin hit his chest and no pinch came. He slid under after that, far from consciousness, dreaming that someone finally removed his blindfold just to reveal that he was in the solitary confinement cell where he had spent a year back in Kinloch Hold.

This time what woke him wasn't a pinch, but something acrid held under his nose that jerked him out of the well of sleep with his head pounding and his heart racing. It burned his sinuses and felt like sniffing panic, and for the space of a nightmarish eternity of a hundred pounding heartbeats, he thought that he was dying.

The hands that had tested his straps were gone, and as a mercy, the cotton baffle that stood between him and his thoughts had receded. _Drugs._ That was why he had been so tired. They must have given him something in the broth, or maybe just added it along with the magebane to keep him docile. And now? More drugs to wake him back up again?

He thought the answer to that was yes.

His mouth was dry, his nose was arid, but his hands were sweating. Sweat trickled down his wrist and into his right palm, leaving behind an itching trail of moisture. He couldn't flatten his palm enough to even press the itching cup of his palm against the inside of his hand's confinement, and each finger was in its own individual prison. He flexed his fingers and palm as much as he could, but the itch only grew.

He sat in a miserable state of agitated anticipation where panic prowled the edges of his mind waiting for another weak moment to make its move.

Footsteps.

Thirty-six.

He heard something scrape on stone near him, like a chair leg being dragged into the right space, before Danarius' voice broke the silence, "Fenris is a formidable creature."

Anders turned his head toward the sound, drinking it down after the long silence, even if the speaker was contemptible. Danarius could talk all day and all night if it would just keep the silence at bay.

"I should know," Danarius said. "He is wholly my creation. I taught him everything."

Anders wished he could roll his eyes. Really, was the man going to sit down and give him a monologue on Fenris? He took back what he thought about letting the man talk all day and all night.

"You're thinking that I've overstepped myself, that the Maker creates mortals, even elves, but you must understand where you have gone wrong with my little wolf." He heard Danarius move and suddenly his voice was right by Anders' ear. "He cannot live without me."

_Maker, please strike one of us down before I have to listen to any more of this._ This dialogue was worse than some of what he'd read in Sigrun's book collection. _If he mentions an Antivan Milk Sandwich, I'm swallowing my own tongue and that's it._

"You think that I am being self-indulgent. I have you in my power and now I am forcing you to listen to my bragging. Let me pose a question – how does a mortal man survive with deadly lyrium laid into most of his body?"

Danarius fell silent to give Anders time to consider the question. He had wondered before of course, how could he not? Between Justice's sharp awareness of the lyrium and his own knowledge of the substance as a mage, he had asked himself that question, but he had known Fenris for years now, and the elf had never shown ill-effects from the lyrium. He had put the question aside as irrelevant. At first because he and Fenris could not stand each other and Fenris' problems weren't his problems, and more recently because they had always had other more immediate things to consider.

Ultimately, he realized that he had simply put it in the mental catchall basket labeled, "magic I don't understand." Even for an accomplished mage, it was a big basket.

"You don't know," Danarius said at last. "Because I am the only one who knows the full secrets of his creation or what it required to keep the lyrium from breaking from the paths I have set it. Even Fenris does not know that his lifetime is quickly counting down to nothing. If I were to die tomorrow, his fate would be sealed. And there is my point. When the time comes, Fenris must go with me. He has had his little flight of fancy that he could be a free man, but that time has passed."

Anders grew cold at the thought that what Danarius said was true, but at the same time, he was a Grey Warden; he was accustomed to living with a constant death sentence. So he and Fenris would have something in common? Something _more_ in common than just a couple of unremovable pieces of jewelry and an awkward weakness to being tickled. There were worse things.

Like being strapped in a chair being forced to listen to an egotistical blood mage talk.

Anders heard the chair scrape and Danarius' voice shifted to indicate that he had stood up. "When the time comes, Fenris must come with me for his own survival."

For a time the silence stretched, leaving Anders struggling not to squirm under Danarius' imagined gaze before the magister spoke again, musingly. "When I first saw you with Fenris, I thought that you were his new master, but that isn't it, is it?"

Fenris' master? Anders wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the assumption, but the thought of Danarius watching him with Fenris killed his urge to laugh, replacing it with unease.

"Why does my wolf follow an abomination?"

He flinched when Danarius' laid his hand on Anders' head. It felt proprietary. "You two make a formidable team. What will I call you to match my wolf? A wolf and a lion, I think. Leontius, yes. And when you please me, I will allow you two to be together, my lion and my wolf."

The pressure of Danarius' hand increased just a little. "You may thank me now."

Anders had come to the conclusion that Danarius was barking mad and that humoring him was the only way to avoid finding out what a barking mad blood mage could do when he was feeling peevish.

He bowed his head.

Danarius patted him the way he would pat a well-behaved dog. "I don't believe for a moment that you're sincere," he said, making Anders' skin prickle with fear. "But practice makes all the difference. Say 'thank you, Master' enough times, and you will learn to believe it." He patted Anders again. "You will learn to crave my visits, won't you my lion?"

Anders stayed motionless until Danarius nodded his head for him. Despite his best intentions to humor the mad magister until a moment to escape presented itself, there were some things he couldn't fake even blind and muzzled.

"Thank me once more and I will see that you are tended."

Anders remembered the kind of tending he had received last time. A knife in the leg and being moved around like an oversized poppet. On the other hand, he was parched, and it would only get worse.

"Too slow," Danarius said. The hand left his head, and Anders counted thirty-five footsteps before he was alone in the dark with his itching hands and his dry mouth and the pinching fingers.


	7. Chapter 6 Fenris

He should have done this sooner.

After the hours spent waiting at the Hanged Man for any news to set them on their path, the trip to the Wounded Coast, the hours spent fighting their way to Hadriana, and the return trip to Kirkwall, Fenris was exhausted, Anders had been gone for a day and a half, and it was an incongruously clear and crisp early winter's day when Fenris' mood said that all of this business should be conducted on a moonless night. He made his way through Darktown to Anders' clinic where the atmosphere better suited his state of mind. Varric's runners had confirmed that yes, the healer was not there, but the door was unlocked. The runners had even set a guard on the door, but none of Anders' immediate confidants had gone down to see the scene for themselves.

If Hawke had been thinking straight, Fenris was certain that he would have gone there first. Of course, Fenris' first thought had been to go to Hawke.

Fenris knew that he was not by nature a leader, but he was doing the best he could. He only feared that against Danarius, it would not be enough, and Anders would suffer for it just as much as Fenris would.

The pair of dwarves outside the clinic doors recognized him – how many lyrium-branded elves were there in Kirkwall after all? – and stood aside to allow him to enter.

He looked around, not sure what he expected to see, some sign of a pitched battle perhaps? Anders was neither defenseless nor harmless, but everything was as he had seen it every other time he had been down to Anders' squalid Darktown home.

He had never been into Anders' bedroom. He knew only that it was behind the door at the back of the clinic. He felt as though he was violating the mage's privacy when he pushed the door open and scanned the tiny room. Anders' bloodied and stained clothes from their trip to the Wounded Coast were piled on his neatly-made bed, his pack sat on the floor next to the bed, and his staff stood propped in the far corner of the room by a small table that held a water pitcher and basin.

Danarius would not have put the staff there, Anders must have left it there before he was taken, but he was not taken from his bed else the clothes would not be in the way and the bed would not be made. He sighed and rubbed his bare palm across his forehead. This was useless, he wasn't an investigator or a tracker, he was a killer or a bodyguard at best.

Pity he didn't have the phylactery Anders had so frequently complained about. "The mages' leash" he called it when he started in on one of his rants about the Chantry system's hypocrisies. Fenris hated to admit it – and never did where Anders might hear him and be encouraged – but he disliked the idea that the Chantry and templars used what amounted to blood magic to track...

He stopped breathing, staring down at the clothes Anders had left behind.

To track mages.

Fenris picked up the pair of blood-caked trousers from the bed. He couldn't take this to the templars, but he did know a blood mage.

Anders was going to owe him for this. Perhaps it would even the debt he owed Anders, since Danarius would never have taken him were it not for his association with Fenris.

• • •

Merrill opened the door to her home as soon as Fenris rapped on her door. She looked past him, clearly expecting to see Hawke or some of Hawke's other companions. Her expression shuttered, hiding a flash of fear when she saw that Fenris had come to her alone.

"Hello?" Her eyes fell to the pair of blood-crusted trousers draped across his arm. "I don't take in washing, but I do know some good tricks for getting blood out of clothes, the important thing is to start with cold water."

Fenris felt his brows draw down and pull together. It rankled to come to this deceptive little witch for anything, but she was his only resource unless Hawke pulled some magic of his own. "These are Anders'."

Merrill's eyes widened. "What did you do to him?"

How could she not know? His entire world was defined by Anders' absence and Danarius' presence and she did not know?

"He is missing," he indicated her home. "May I come in?"

"Oh. Oh!" She stood aside to allow him in before she closed the door. "I'm sorry for the mess. I keep trying and it's always dirty. What do you mean Anders is missing? And why do you have his bloody trousers?" He thought he heard her murmur, "It better not be something dirty," but she shook her head and said "Nothing!" when he made an inquisitive noise.

Briefly, he explained Danarius' message and its implications, glossing over Hadriana's death in a few spare words. He was not ready to consider the deeper implications of what had passed with Hadriana, nor what he had learned, either about his sister or about himself.

Merrill listened, and by the time he finished, she was hugging herself, but she asked the pertinent question: "And you came to me?"

The words tasted foul on his tongue, but he spat them out. "Can you use—" _blood magic_ "—magic and this to find him?" He held out the trousers. "It's his blood." With the lives they led, he felt that required clarification. How many nights had they all returned from an outing with Hawke covered in other people's blood? It was practically the definition of an outing with the man.

Merrill held out a hand. "I'll do my best."

• • •

Bodahn answered the door before his knocking could turn into pounding. "Messere Hawke was asking about you," he said as Fenris pushed past him with Merrill in tow.

"Fenris," Hawke was at the head of the stairs. "I was worried. I didn't know where you had gone." His expression flickered with surprise when he looked past Fenris to see Merrill.

She had her staff in hand, a little pennant of bloody cloth sticking straight out from it.

"She can find Anders," Fenris said, cutting off any attempts to talk about Hawke's worries.

"He's isn't far," Merrill said, fussing with the pennant. "But I don't know how long I can keep this spell going, so we need to hurry."

Hawke appeared utterly nonplussed for the first time in the years Fenris had known him, but he closed his eyes and shook himself like a dog shaking off water. When he opened his eyes, his expression was determined and focused.

He moved swiftly to the chest that stood by his writing table and withdrew a handful of tiny glass vials that were lit from inside with the telltale blue of lyrium potions. He pressed them into Merrill's hands and snapped his fingers for Brutal.

"Right. Let's go. We'll collect Aveline along the way."

Ser Pounce-a-lot meowed irritably at losing his bed and strolled over to Sandal for his proper adulation. "Kitty!"

Hawke muttered, "We have to get Anders back so I can get rid of that cat."

• • •

Aveline shaded her eyes with her hand and searched the horizon for some indication of their destination. "I thought you said he wasn't far."

They were standing on a dock, and Merrill's pennant was pointing out toward the water.

"It isn't!" she said. "I didn't know that it wouldn't be far if you're a fish. These things aren't exact you know."

Fenris shifted restively, his right hand wrapped hard around the cuff on his left wrist. "We need a ship. Quickly."

Hawke groaned. "Of course we do." He glanced over his shoulder toward the city that loomed over them. "Right. Stay here. I have a favor I can call in."

He jogged up the stairs toward Lowtown with Brutal trotting at his side.

Fenris folded his arms and let himself sink into empty waiting, far from his thoughts of anything but the moment when he would find Danarius and tear his heart out. He would not think of his sister, Hadriana, Anders, his past, or anything that would distract him from one single goal – kill Danarius.

He saw Merrill drink one of Hawke's lyrium potions and turn to watch the stairs where their fearless leader had disappeared.

Aveline checked her sword in its scabbard, brushed imaginary dirt off the Sword of Mercy emblem on her shield, and leaned against a wall, settling into a guard's patient attentiveness.

Hawke made them wait the longest twenty minutes of the day before he descended the steps at a run. "Athenril's given me the okay to borrow one of her ships. We're looking for the _Bawdy Mermaid._ She said the first mate would know us."

He grunted and started down the docks, looking at ship's prows for the right name. "She also said that not only doesn't she owe me a favor anymore, now I owe her."

The _Bawdy Mermaid_ looked like a glorified fishing boat, but Fenris didn't care so long as it was seaworthy. The deck was clear, and everything looked to be neatly stowed. It might be a fishing boat with delusions of grandeur, but it was shipshape.

"Hello, _Bawdy Mermaid,"_ Hawke called. "Permission to come aboard?"

There was a long pause before a head poked out of a hatch. Fenris shaded his eyes, not believing what he was seeing.

"You never asked permission to board the bawdy mermaid before," Isabela said, hoisting herself up on deck to strike a pose that almost hid the uncertainty in her expression. "Permission granted."

• • •

"That bitch, Athenril," Isabela said, after everyone agreed that she and Hawke could work out their personal problems on the way back. She steered the ship with a deft hand, glancing occasionally at Merrill's pennant like a compass. "Technically she's the captain, but she's always busy in Kirkwall, so this is as close to a ship of my own as I can manage."

"But why—" Aveline clamped a hand over Merrill's mouth before she could finish that question and open that box of worms. They all wanted to know why Isabela had run away and if she had planned to come back, but after.

"Do you have any idea where we're going?" Fenris asked instead.

"There's an island in that direction," Isabela said. "It's not far, and it has an old slaver's holding and guard outpost. I think it used to be part of Kirkwall's outer defenses."

"That sounds about right," Aveline said. "Do you know anything else about it?"

Isabela laughed. "Only that smart people don't set foot there. There are stories about old Tevinter magic and demons and curses."

Hawke snorted. "That says all that needs to be said about why we're going there."

He seemed to have put his shock at seeing Isabela behind him, but dissembling came as naturally to Hawke as breathing. Fenris thought it was one of the reasons that he and Isabela had seemed so well-matched. Now they moved as carefully around each other as two dancers in the opening steps of a dance they had seen performed by others but never practiced themselves.

Fenris moved to the ship's prow to watch the horizon, ignoring the soft murmurs of voices behind him.

_I'm coming for you, Danarius._ After years of being the hunted, being the hunter made him feel weightless, as though he had stepped off a cliff and was falling free toward some fate he could not see.

• • •

"Somebody needs a spanking!" Isabela's laugh rang out as she slid out of the shadows to bury her daggers in the last guard's back. Awkward or not, Fenris had to admit that her simple joy in mayhem could lighten even an ugly moment.

He pushed one of the dead men over onto his back with his foot. "Danarius' livery. We are in the right place."

He looked up to see that Merrill's pennant was drooping. "Is your spell finished?"

"Oh, no," she tipped her staff to show that the pennant was still indicating directions, only now it shifted to point at a downward angle. "I think this means he's underground."

Aveline bent by one of the guards to wipe her sword clean on his tunic, Hawke rifled through another guard's pocket, chortling to himself over some small prize or other, Isabela dropped a strong arm over Merrill's shoulder for a one-armed hug. "Lead on, Kitten." She shot Fenris a sly grin. "We've got to get Fenris' hubby back."


	8. Chapter 7 Anders

Anders was as tired as he had ever been in his life, which for a man who had fought darkspawn, dragons (both alive and undead), and an uncountable number of demons, was saying a lot. He was tired, his leg ached from a fresh wound made to deliver a new dose of magebane into his system, and his hands still itched so much he was certain that the itch was going to drive him mad long before the restraints or the sleep deprivation could do the job. But after the magebane had been administered, he had been given broth again, allowed to empty his bladder again, and for one brief moment, he had been free to take deep breaths and fill the silence with the sound of his own voice, which he had used to deliver a string of invective against whoever owned those damnable pinching fingers.

Muzzled once again, he was trying to ignore the magebane in his veins by humming a song that a woman he had known long ago had sung to a little boy named Theuderic every night before he fell asleep.

_Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf,  
>Der Vater hüt die Schaf,<br>Die Mutter schüttelts Bäumelein..._

He paused in his humming. _The mother shakes the what? _He wracked his brain and could not remember what the mother was supposed to shake.

The thought that he had forgotten something like that made him want to weep for another lost piece of that little boy.

His sorrow blanketed him so thoroughly that at first he did not register a change in his environment, then he heard a breath, sucked in as though someone had been surprised. Then movement, a rustle of cloth, and deep in his chest more felt than heard, the vibration of some distant pounding.

Footsteps, then, and suddenly Danarius' voice snapped, "They're dead. Open the tunnel."

Anders forgot his sadness over the lullaby and whipped his head toward the sound of Danarius' voice. Dead? Who? How?

He did not dare trust the hot bloom of hope, but it was there, bright and dangerous despite his efforts to quell it. He feared that hope crushed might kill him.

Behind him, he heard stone grind and scrape before a bitter cold gust of wind swept over him, heavy with the odor of salt and fish. It acted like a breath blown on a guttering fire to fan it to life again, flaring life into the guttering flame of hope in his chest. He could think of only one man who might have Danarius on the run like this.

_Hawke._

His brief, shining moment collapsed at the feel of a blade against his throat. Hawke would come and find that he had come too late.

This was why it was foolish to hope.

He drew in a deep breath of the sea air and braced himself, feeling Justice with him and knowing that at the very least, Justice might have a chance at freedom. Perhaps his soul's flight could show Justice the way back past the Veil to his home.

"No!"

He heard the sound of a blow and the blade was gone. Danarius' voice was low and venomous. "He dies at my will, he _lives_ with my permission."

A hand closed over Anders' muzzle and tilted his face upward as though to meet someone's eyes. Danarius said, "Remember what I told you about Fenris. Remember and consider what his life is worth to you."

Then the hand was gone, and footsteps receded behind him.

He felt as alone as he always did when Danarius was not speaking to him, but this time he had the cold sea air and distant sound of waves to keep him company. This could all be some new and horrifically inventive ploy to drive him closer to madness, but he could not bring himself to believe that.

He sat and fought to stay awake, straining to hear, struggling to keep his hope from guttering out.

This was real. It had to be real. If it was not real he would...

He shied away from the truth that if it was not real, he would do nothing because he was still just as helpless as ever, but the seed had been planted. Slow, cruel, sneaking thoughts asked him what he would do if this room was so well-hidden that no one ever found him.

He would die in this chair. There would be no mysterious hands to move his straps and feed him broth or help keep him from soiling himself. He would sit here in his own filth and waste away until some adventurous soul came and found him, and would they even give the poor sod a second thought beyond "I wonder if he's got anything in his pockets?"

_"Down here!"_

He jerked out of his dozing half-nightmare at the sound of a distant call. Isabela?

No. She was gone. She had left Hawke and disappeared.

He must have been dreaming.

The drug that they gave him either along with the magebane or in the broth had him firmly in its grip. He gave a muffled, giddy giggle at the image of a stone golem wearing furry gloves to hold him under some slow-slowing river of sleep until he drowned in it.

Even adrenaline and hope did little to keep him from fuzzing in and out of consciousness. He dreamed the sound of Isabela's cursing and Aveline's crisp call of "We found him!"

In a nightmare haze he heard Hawke shout, "Shades!" before his dream filled the darkness with the sounds of the vicious hiss of demons' hate made manifest and the creeping weakness that struck when shades found a foothold in the mortal realm.

Such strange details for a dream - he was certain that he heard the sizzling slither of a rage demon's movement amid the clash of steel and cries of pain and anger from his friends. He thought he heard Merrill's voice raised to cry out the words of a spell, and even past Isabela's often-incongruous laughter during combat, he thought he heard the surreally calm mutter of Fenris' habitual slip back into Arcanum while he fought.

He wanted to say "Don't stop!" when the sounds of fighting tapered off and then fell into sudden silence, but he realized that the silence was not complete. He could still hear the sounds of panting breaths and then Fenris spoke, close enough to make him flinch and jerk against his bonds.

Fenris was breathing heavily, but his tone was still strangely gentle. "Anders. I am going to touch you now. I am going to remove the gag first."

And then there were fingers on the straps around his head, and voices, speaking, so much at once - Hawke and Isabela, Aveline and Merrill.

Dear Maker, he wasn't dreaming.

The straps loosened and then the gag came away. He heard something - probably the gag - hit something hard with a flat slap and then a soft thwap of it hitting the floor as though Fenris had taken it off and then flung it aside.

"Maker _fuck_ yes!"

Anders opened his mouth wide and stretched his jaw before Fenris said again in that strange, gentle tone, "Close your eyes."

"What?"

"Where is Danarius?" Aveline was near him and he didn't know which way to turn his head.

"What?"

"Danarius, Anders, where is he?"

_"What?"_

And then there were hands on his leg where the first knife wound was and Anders whimpered and turned his head frantically, shaking away Fenris' hands as he cried out. "Don't touch me!" He was gasping for breath now, drawing it down in great gulps that did nothing to ease the upwelling of terror that the sudden foreign touch had generated.

Fenris hissed a curse in Arcanum before he snapped, "Go! All of you except Isabela. Can you not smell the sea air from that tunnel?"

The hands withdrew. "I'm sorry." Merrill's voice. It had been Merrill touching him. "I was just trying to see if he was badly hurt."

"You have had enough of his blood," Fenris said, his voice dropping low enough to rumble like a growl. "Go with Hawke."

He heard sounds of motion behind him and struggled to slow his breathing before Fenris drew his attention again. "I am going to remove your blindfold. Close your eyes, the light will be painful at first."

"Why am I staying here?" Isabela asked from off to Anders' left.

"His hands. Those mitts have locks."

Anders heard Isabela hiss. Her voice, when she spoke again, was low by his side, as though she were kneeling. "I've never seen anything like these before."

Fenris' voice was a whipcrack. "Warn him before you touch him."

More gently he asked, "Are your eyes closed?"

"Yes." Anders was surprised at himself. He had spent an eternity wanting the freedom to talk and now he was shocked into silence. He broke it with questions. "How did you find me? Where am I? How long has it been?"

"Two days," Isabela said. "And I'm going to touch your left wrist now."

"I'm taking off the blindfold," Fenris said from behind him.

Anders sucked in a deep breath at the feeling of the blindfold loosening and then he heard Fenris fling it away as he had thrown the muzzle. Gently, Fenris picked away whatever padding had pressed his eyes tightly closed and suddenly Anders' world grew lighter.

Despite Fenris' warning to keep his eyes closed, he could not resist the need to see again, but Fenris was apparently ready for him. The moment he tried to blink his eyes open, Fenris' hand covered them. "Slowly," he said. "Open them just a little at a time."

The first thing Anders saw was the dark of Fenris' palm in front of his eyes. His eyelashes brushed across the rough skin before Fenris pulled it away.

The dazzling discomfort was worth every moment, but he kept his eyes down, slowly resolving blurs into detail. Isabela knelt at his side, her head down, working at the strap that bound his wrist inside the metal mitt.

"I will leave you with Isabela now," Fenris said. "It is always hardest until the blindfold comes off."

Anders heard Fenris' light steps running away. When he twisted his head and squinted, he saw the shock of white hair disappearing down an open tunnel that lay at his back no more than ten feet away. He thought about calling Fenris back, to warn him that Danarius might hold the only key to his lyrium and survival.

He let him go in the name of vengeance.

"Where am I?"

Isabela glanced up at him and smiled. "On an island not far from Kirkwall, and it was Merrill who led us here."

Anders' eyebrows shot up. "Merrill?"

"Fenris brought her something of yours that had your blood all over it and she used it to track you. Magic, don't you know?" She tsked when the lock resisted her efforts and slid a different pick out of its case.

While she spoke, he craned his head around to see the room where he had spent most of the past two days. It was rectangular, longer than it was wide, with the open tunnel behind him at one narrow end, and an open passageway that receded into darkness in front of him. Notably, the walls were covered with rugs from floor to ceiling.

Then it sank in just what she was saying. _"Fenris?"_Marvelous, he sounded like one of those birds from Par Vollen that would mimic what a person said without having a mind of its own for real speech.

There was a tiny click and Isabela crowed with delight before opening the mitt.

"Yes!" Anders pulled his hand free and stretched his fingers wide before he closed it with a happy groan and scratched his fingernails over his palm. "Dear Maker, that's better than sex."

Isabela snickered as she knee-walked over to start unlocking his other hand. "I know it's been a while, sweet thing, but take my word, it isn't better than sex."

"I might remember a thing or two about it," Anders said drily. "So you're telling me that Fenris worked together with Merrill to use blood magic to find me."

"Mmhm." The second mitt opened easily for her and Anders repeated the palm itching process while Isabela unbuckled the straps that held his arms to the armrests. "That's what I'm telling you."

"Why?"

"You'll have to ask him that." Isabela got his right arm free and gave his cuff a spin. "I never got to hear what happened with you two in Ferelden. Did you say hello to Dal for me?"

"No." Anders pulled his wrist free of her touch and stretched his arm and shoulder for the first time in days. It hurt, but it was one of the best hurts he had felt in his life. "Why are you here?"

She laughed and stood up, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "I never could resist a damsel in distress."

"Isabela..."

"Pick another topic," she told him while she freed his other arm. "Let's talk about why Fenris would want to get you back."

"I wanted to find Danarius," Fenris answered before Anders could say he had no idea why Fenris would go to any trouble for him.

Looking back over his shoulder, Anders saw Brutal race up the tunnel ahead of Fenris, Aveline, Merrill and Hawke. The mabari circled Anders' chair, sniffing it before he lifted his leg to assert his dominance against the back strut.

"Brutal, you little shit," Isabela said before standing up with a hiss of exasperation. She pulled one of her daggers and sliced through remaining straps.

She held out a hand to Anders and pulled, catching him when his attempt to stand ended with his legs giving out under him. Two days of being strapped in one position, virtually no food or water, too many drugs, and being stabbed in the legs left him weaker than he wanted to be.

"A little help here," Isabela called. Fenris came to lift Anders out of her arms.

"Tell me you killed him," Anders said, letting Fenris hold him up.

"We did not."

Aveline came around his other side and took one of Anders' arms, "Isabela's boat can't hope to catch what Danarius escaped in."

"What was it?" Isabela asked, and Anders could see avarice light her eyes.

"You're the pirate, not us," Hawke said wearily, bringing up the rear with Merrill. "It was swoopy and fast and heading for the horizon. Also, traps." He leaned down to show gashes torn in his armor where he had apparently stepped incautiously.

He clasped Anders' shoulder. "Glad we've got you back."

"Glad you've got me back," Anders agreed. "Not to be ungrateful, but..."

"He needs somewhere to lie down," Fenris said for him. "Then water and food."

"No broth," Anders said.

Fenris' face tightened. "No broth."

"Back to the _Mermaid_ then," Hawke said. "And back to Kirkwall."

Anders dug his feet into the ground before Aveline and Fenris could help him out of the room. "Wait." He turned with their help for a last look at the room.

"Fenris?"

"Yes?"

"Don't break my arm." He leaned more heavily on Aveline and pulled his arm free of Fenris' hold, sliding it down Fenris' waist to open one of his belt pouches.

He pulled out one of Tomwise's specialty grenades and felt his lips stretch in a ghastly parody of a grin before he threw the grenade into the center of the room and watched fire erupt, blasting the chair out of existence.

"Now we can go."


	9. Chapter 8 Fenris

The stairs up from the Docks had never looked as high or as numerous as they did when the _Bawdy Mermaid_ made port in Kirkwall. Anders was a heavy weight against Fenris' side with an arm slung over his shoulder. Healing potions had dealt with the wounds in his legs, and the magebane had worn off, but Anders still staggered like a sailor after a shore leave bender. Fenris supported him to keep him from stumbling over the railing into the frigid water and Anders had not given a single word of protest.

Hawke had offered to help with Anders, but had not seemed surprised when Fenris declined.

"Good thing Darktown's close," Anders said, his words so thick with fatigue he sounded drunk.

"You are not going to Darktown," Fenris said, waiting for Isabela to tie off the boat before she and Hawke pushed out the gangplank.

Anders sighed. "Got nowhere else and it's colder than a broodmother's tits out here."

He had not slept during the trip back to the city. Every time he had started to doze, he had jerked awake with a gasp, eyes wide, hands clutching at whatever was nearby. Once that had been Aveline's armored thigh. It was a measure of her forbearance for his condition that he had not been forced to heal a broken hand.

Hawke looked ready to clap him on the shoulder but stopped himself with his hand hovering awkwardly over Anders' shoulder before he pulled it away. "My house." He cut off whatever argument might have come. "I can use the company. Things have been... different lately." He cast a glance toward Isabela before calling for Brutal and starting down the plank. "I won't take no for an answer."

He ignored them and whistled for one of the Docks' ubiquitous urchins, bending to give the child a few coins and some quiet directions while Aveline and Merrill followed him down onto the dock.

Fenris looked up at the stairs again and shifted Anders' weight to hold him more comfortably.

Anders let his head fall forward, closing his eyes and resting his chin on his chest. He drew a deep breath before he raised his head. He sounded a little more clearheaded when he said, "We'll never get up all those stairs if we don't start walking."

• • •

Aveline left the group to escort Merrill home. Isabela tried to make excuses about leaving the _Mermaid_ but Hawke caught her hand and leaned in to say something in her ear that Fenris had not heard. She had pulled her hand out of his grasp, but when Hawke led them into his home, she was at his side.

Hawke's urchin messenger had handily beaten them to Hightown. Orana greeted them at the door with a careful bow. "Messere Hawke. Bodahn said to tell you that he has prepared one of the spare bedrooms for Messere Anders. I have some bread and milk tea ready unless you want me to cook something else?"

"Orana." Hawke spoke gently, but his own fatigue was evident. He seemed to be grasping at his last reserves of patience. "I told you that you didn't have to do anything around the house until you had taken some time for yourself."

"Hawke." Fenris knew he had to be an unexpected source of support for Orana, but he of all people understood her reasons. "All her life she has been taught that being idle will invite punishment."

She dropped her eyes and nodded.

"She would feel worse if you did not allow her to do something."

Again Orana nodded.

Hawke rubbed a hand along his beard and sighed. "Fine. I get your point. Thank you, Orana, you can take the food to Anders' room, then get some rest. Someone in this house should get some sleep." He looked pointedly at Isabela before giving Anders and Fenris a weary smile. "Fenris, Bodahn can make up another guest room for you. If you two don't need me...?"

Anders shook his head. "Ser Pounce-a-lot?"

Orana said, "Bodahn took him to your room, Messere. He said you would want your kitty." She smiled shyly. "He's a beautiful cat."

"I don't know who she is," Anders said, "but I like this girl."

"Fenris can tell you after you've had some sleep." Hawke held a hand toward the stairs, a gesture meant for Isabela.

Her confident mask slipped for a moment, leaving Fenris half-expecting to see her run before she fixed it back in place with a smirk and a fingertip trailed along the edge of Hawke's jaw. "Go to bed, boys. Together. Together is almost always better than alone."

She patted Fenris' cheek and blew a kiss to Anders before sauntering up the stairs, calling back, "Don't you want to make sure I don't go out the window, Hawke?"

Hawke forced a smile and started after her, pausing at the foot of the stairs to turn back to Fenris and Anders. "If you need anything, _anything,_ it's yours. Get some rest and we can make some plans tomorrow about where we'll go from here."

With that, he was gone, taking the stairs in long strides before he and Isabela disappeared behind a closed door.

"Um..." Orana might not know what to make of Hawke's behavior, but she tried to cover it. "I can show you to your room?"

Anders groaned and said, "Maker, please yes, you beautiful girl."

• • •

The guest room was larger than Anders' miserable living quarters, and warmer than Fenris' home with its rotted ceiling and broken windows. Someone – Bodahn, Fenris presumed – had gotten a fire started in the fireplace to further warm the room. The bed rivaled the one in Hawke's bedroom in size, and Ser Pounce-a-lot sat on it, squarely atop of a long nightshirt that Bodahn had probably taken from Hawke's wardrobe. He stood and meowed when he saw Anders.

Anders pushed away from Fenris for the first time since they had left Isabela's boat, going to his knees at the edge of the bed to pull the cat against his chest.

The unalloyed pleasure Anders always took in his pet was something more now. Fenris had to turn away from the mage's tears to give them both the illusion that they went unseen. He put himself between Anders and Orana and moved her back toward the hall. "When you bring the food, you may leave the tray outside the door. I will bring it in if he is awake."

He had never before appreciated the lack of inquisitiveness that was drilled into slaves, but her willingness to accept the directions without even trying to see past him to Anders where he clung to his cat endeared her to him.

"Yes, Messere—"

"Fenris. Not Messere." He put a hand on the door and loomed until she scurried back out into the hall. "Just knock once when you leave the food."

He locked the door before turning back to see Anders hunched with the cat in his arms. His experience with cats was limited, but even so, Ser Pounce-a-lot's patience with being clutched so tightly seemed extraordinary.

"Anders," he said, moving to crouch in front of him. "You will feel better when you have washed yourself and changed."

Anders made a sound Fenris first mistook for a cough before realizing it was meant to be a laugh. "How long did it take for you to feel better?"

Fenris flinched back from the words as though Anders had lashed out with a slap before he caught himself. He tried to put those times behind him, to push them deep into the well where his rage seethed, clapping the cap on tight to keep it all out of sight and out of thought. Seeing Anders in that chair, Fenris remembered more than he wanted, and it came out in the tightly-reined tension in his voice. "I had no one to come for me after only two days."

It was Anders' turn to flinch, but he let Fenris gently lift Ser Pounce-a-lot out of his arms and help him to his feet.

Someone had left a pitcher and basin on the desk along with a washcloth and towel. Anders stank of the fighting he had done before he had been taken, and of the sweat and fear of his captivity. Fenris walked him over to the desk and helped him peel off his filthy shirt before wetting the washcloth and pressing it into his hand.

"It will help," he said before he turned away to remove his gauntlets. He was lying, of course. Washing away the dirt and stink would not make anything better except Anders' smell, but sometimes all one could do was to tend the body while the mind still bled from all of its subtler wounds.

Ser Pounce-a-lot jumped up on the table where Fenris set his gauntlets to sniff them before the cat rubbed the edge of his jaw along both gauntlets. Strange little creature. Fenris ran a bare finger down the cat's back and felt his lips pull in an almost-smile when it pushed up into the touch. Ser Pounce-a-lot tolerated his careful attentions, even purring for Fenris until a light rap signaled Orana's delivery.

Fenris retrieved the tray from the hall where she had left it as he had asked. He barely caught sight of her back quickly turning the corner when he opened the door. His ambivalence tugged him between his loathing of slavery and his appreciation for the courtesy she showed. Had she not learned such obedience as a slave? But one less person to think about or speak to simplified things for Fenris.

"There is f—" Fenris turned around and saw that Anders had stripped off his trousers and smallclothes as well and stood naked, leaning against the desk while he scrubbed dried blood off his thighs. "—food."

He dropped his gaze to the tray, noting its contents while he tried to unsee the line of Anders' bare back and equally bare backside. He had seen him nude before, but...

It was always the wrong time for them. Always.

He focused instead on the tray's contents. Orana had brought bread and tea as she had mentioned, but she had also added a thick sauce that Fenris recognized as a Tevinter version of applesauce – sweetened with dark sugar and lightly spiced. A favorite among children and gentle on the stomach. It reminded Fenris of his old life, but lacking the same associations, he thought Anders might like it.

He set the tray down on the bedside table and turned to the bed where Ser Pounce-a-lot had once again laid himself in the middle of the clean nightshirt. The cat gave a small sound of protest when Fenris lifted him up and retrieved the nightshirt.

"Anders?" He kept his eyes down on the cloth on his hands.

"Hm?"

"Tell me when you are finished."

Anders laughed, and Fenris counted it as progress that it was recognizable as a laugh this time. "Why are you doing this?"

With his eyes down, he got a more intimate view of Anders than his bare back when he approached to take the nightshirt out of Fenris' hands. He couldn't win! He snapped his eyes up to Anders' face and felt the tips of his ears heating with embarrassment.

"Why are you the one taking care of me? Why did you take charge of all of this?" Anders stiffly pulled the nightshirt on and picked up Ser Pounce-a-lot to hold the cat against his chest again. "Why you?"

Fenris knew that his expression was knitting itself into a scowl. Why him indeed? What words could explain all of it?

"I..." He raked his fingers through his hair and moved away from Anders to stand in front of the fireplace. At least the fire's heat was better than the heat of embarrassment at finding himself thinking of Anders as...

"Running away from Danarius has not brought me freedom. I made a choice not to run away." He leaned an arm on the mantel and rested his forehead against his forearm. "I wanted the fear to end."

"Oh." Fenris heard Anders move behind him and the creak of the bed as he sat. "Okay then. I knew it was stupid to think it was something else. You never kissed me or anything to make me think it was anything else."

Fenris stiffened, catching the words _That never happened!_ behind closed lips. He had put two kisses behind the screen of that lie and it had helped neither of them.

He turned to see Anders perched stiffly on the edge of the bed, Ser Pounce-a-lot on his lap. Anders had his attention on the cat or maybe his hands where they moved restlessly through the cat's fur, but Ser Pounce-a-lot pinned him with a steely gaze that seemed to say _Fix this!_

How was it that he would fiercely resist any attempt by any of his friends to guilt trip him into some action, but a cat had him squirming with a look?

His shoulders lifted and dropped along with his sigh before he left the safety of the mantel to stand in front of Anders. "Anders..." Anders raised his eyes, but his expression was closed and unreadable.

The first time they had kissed, Anders had taken him by surprise.

The second time they had kissed, Fenris had taken Anders by surprise.

Fenris held Anders' eyes, giving him time to push him away or say no as he reached out to cup Anders' jaw in his right hand and leaned down to brush their lips together.

He had no expectations of Anders' response – the mage constantly surprised him. He might pull away or try to strip Fenris' armor off and ride him to the floor.

Anders inhaled sharply before he pressed up into the kiss, closing his left hand over Fenris' wrist and cuff. He made soft, hungry sounds against Fenris' mouth without the pleading Fenris remembered from kissing Anders in Vigil's Keep. Anders the teenager had needed Fenris to give him his kiss and touch, Anders the man took what Fenris had offered and pressed for more.

They pulled apart at some mutually recognized signal. Anders still held Fenris' hand in place against his jaw while he caught his breath, Fenris held himself on the verge of trembling while he looked down into Anders' eyes.

"This is not the time." Fenris knew that he sounded shaky. He _was_ shaky. But he would not take advantage of what Danarius had done to see his own need for some mortal touch satisfied

"It could be the time," Anders said, lightly squeezing Fenris' wrist to remind him that they were still touching.

"No." Fenris rubbed his thumb over Anders' stubbly cheek before gently extricating himself from Anders' hold. "For too many reasons."

He could still feel Anders' lips against his, could still taste his mouth, and Maker, he wanted more, but he would not take advantage of how broken they both were tonight.

"You should eat some of what Orana has brought," he said to fill the expectant silence between them.

Anders wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "In the morning."

"Then you should sleep."

"When was the last time you slept?" Anders asked.

Fenris opened his mouth to answer and found he could not remember the last time he had slept.

Anders huffed through his nose and set Ser Pounce-a-lot aside long enough to pull the blankets back and lie down. The cat promptly returned to curl against his chest.

"You could sleep here," he offered, looking up at Fenris, who stood like a statue watching him settle himself to rest.

A mage and abomination should not look so vulnerable.

"Hawke said—"

"Fenris, please."

Fenris thought the _please_ cost Anders some price he could ill-afford to pay after what he had been through.

He stood over the bed for a long moment watching Anders. The lines around his eyes were deeper, his hands moved restlessly, plucking at the bedclothes, spinning the cuff on his wrist, petting Ser Pounce-a-lot. He watched Fenris with such hope in his expression that it was practically a shout in the quiet room.

Fenris' attention did not waver from Anders' face as he removed his chest piece and set it aside with his gauntlets, soon adding his belt and tunic to the pile before he moved around the room, extinguishing candles and lanterns until only one remained lit.

After a last moment's internal argument, he slipped under the blankets with Anders, settling his back against Anders' back in a way that was comfortingly familiar from their time chained together.

Some of the tension drained out of Anders before he rolled over, ignoring Ser Pounce-a-lot's complaint at no longer being the center of his cuddling attention. Fenris hesitated for the space of one deep breath before rolling to face Anders.

The single candle's light made Anders' face a study in shadows and hard planes, but somehow, Fenris realized, between one hot night under Darktown and this cold night in Hightown, it had become a face he wanted to see more of.

He drew Anders into the circle of his arms and settled him against his chest. "Sleep now. I will guard your rest."


End file.
